using knoppix live cd ... just to get a feel for how it works, but ive got a slight problem

i cannot get knoppix to see the d drive in my computer, its not in the FSTab file, it is however in the dev/hdb and dev/hdb1 but both throw up a "permissions" error of some sorts, if i press ctrl-alt-F1 then i can see that it has recognised the drive at boot up and its assigned HDB to it (or whatever it does) but i just cant view any files on it, or even access it from knoppix

if tried going to disks admin and it shows the HD in there, just unavailable, ive tried formating it from there ... nothing, drive still shows inactive or unavailable or somehting like that

theres nothing on the drive, well nothing worth keeping, its just a back up drive really, but i was wanting to instal knoppix or debian, but knoppix-installer doesnt work and debian just sits at a blue screen for ever

any way i can get knoppix to see this drive, PLEASE help

PS its a slave drive in an IDE port ... main drive works fine HDA1

thanks